


Indian Summer

by Arevhat



Category: Farscape
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 18:51:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/397074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arevhat/pseuds/Arevhat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is only a girl with a supple mind and strong teeth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indian Summer

She collects cockleshells every third day, midday, vain little creatures that clatter in her pail and make her palms itch. Sand under her nails and tongue and pillow and they whisper, whisper, in the wind.

The villagers whisper as well, an uneasy love song. She soaks up every drop through the soles of her feet, licks it from her lips and fingers until she has grown ripe and golden, and then they whisper _witch, witch_ ; but she is only a girl with a supple mind and strong teeth, scalloped like her shells.

Still.

Sad-eyed women spit their dreams into her cup and pay her a penny, a poesy, a fat duck egg, to tell them what she sees. She spins a story from the strands, bits of truth and pieces of lies, and when their greedy-eyed men come to her bed, she almost always turns them away.

Her own eyes are neither sad nor greedy, but one third day, midday, she sees her world is small and scant. She scatters her shells in the sand and herself in the wind, and it is cycles and cycles before she is carried home again, her pockets filled to bursting with the scales and spores and stories of a thousand worlds.

The villagers whisper, an uneasy condemnation. She soaks up every drop through the soles of her feet, licks it from her lips and fingers until she has grown fetid and wild, and then she whispers _see, see_ ; but she is only an old woman with a supple mind and strong teeth, scalloped like her shells.

Still.

Sad-eyed, greedy-eyed, mad-eyed, needy-eyed: all come to her in secret, in the shadows of the day; and she spits and she spins and she almost never turns them away.

“Old woman,” Scorpius says. Leather creaks as he taps his temple. “Old woman, what have you discovered?”

Noranti scratches, sways. His eyes have lost none of their novelty in the cycles since they first met; and sometimes she thinks that should be enough for her to give him what he desires most, and sometimes she thinks that would be enough, if only she could remember.

“My teeth are strong,” she says, and bites the air between them.


End file.
